Advancing Equity Through Action with Evelyn Myrie's Visionary Approach

Speaker 1: 0:11

Welcome to Speak Up International with Rita Burke and Elton Brown.

Speaker 2: 0:17

Today we will be having a conversation with a woman that I've known for quite a few years. What is significant about this chat is that it will go down in history as Speak Up International's first for 2024. Now Evelyn Myrie is the founder and principal consultant at the Empower Strategy Group. Over the years, she has held numerous leadership positions in the government, business and the non-profit sector. Evelyn has won quite a number of awards, and she focuses on helping organizations translate their mission into action. She recently organized a 25 community consultations for the Hamilton Wentworth School Board's Safe School panel and authored a report on equity, diversity and inclusion. Evelyn has been recognized by the community with several awards, and today we welcome a woman that I know as a community builder, because her story will no doubt inspire, educate and inform. Help me welcome Ms Evelyn Myrie.

Speaker 3: 1:50

Thank you so much, rita, for that wonderful, kind introduction. It's my pleasure to join you today on this important podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:59

It's a huge responsibility, being our first interview of 2024. So we welcome you, our honored guests. Can you provide more details about your role as the founder and principal consultant at Empower?

Speaker 3: 2:17

Strategy Group. Okay, I'll be happy to. So my company I'm self-employed Company is Empower Strategy Group and we partner with organizations to help them develop their equity, diversity and inclusion plans and to really help them become a more inclusive organization, embedding EDI as a part of the organization's DNA. So we engage in training as well as issues around management of EDI, issues including audits of organizations to get a picture of how they're doing and what needs to be done to make the best practice organization and really make sure that employees are treated fairly and equitably. And at the end of the day, we aspire to help organizations achieve their goals and to be more productive, with very happy people who are living the efforts. So that's my company.

Speaker 3: 3:17

My background, however, is actually I spend most of my career in equity and inclusion, starting with Secretary of State for Canada, running the women's program for the federal government, along with the multicultural program. I was responsible for the Southwest office and was the regional director for some time. So I spent most of my life in this work and over the last five years or so I have put out my own shingle silver speak for my own company. But my background is largely around issues around gender and race equity, starting from my first job in Windsor at the immigrant women's center back in the late 80s, when immigrant women's issues certainly was very marginal and was not thought of, and bringing it to the public square by advocating for policy changes and programs to acknowledge the complexity on the diversity of women's experience. So I end up now with my own company doing this work, using my expertise and my, the knowledge I've gained, to help organization become better with the context of equity, diversity.

Speaker 2: 4:35

Thanks, Eveline. That's when I first met you. You were involved with the Immigrant Centre. Now, what kind of changes, what kinds of changes have you observed working in this field of equity, diversity and inclusion? Have you seen much progress, so to speak?

Speaker 3: 4:56

I've seen an acknowledgement of the need for this work and to really put employees at the centre and provide a creative environment in the workplace where the issues are addressed, and so that's a great acknowledgement. That's happened and there has been many steps taken by governments and public sector and also private sector institutions to improve their HR and to make sure that companies are in compliance with human rights codes and legislations and so forth, so there has been some change. There is more accommodations being considered. Over the years, it was never really considered around. Treating people equally means treating everybody the same, but we're now embedding the idea of equity, where we give people what they need to thrive and to grow, as opposed to treating everyone, regardless of their situation, the same. So that's a really big shift. It is not perfect, but there is recognition of using equity strategies to drive equality. There are more and more companies employing equity consultants and staffing to address some of their policies, reviewing their policies and the way they do business to ensure that they're not unintentionally impacting negatively impacting some employees or others.

Speaker 3: 6:28

Now it's an ongoing work and we're always learning and there always change has to take place, but I think that there has been significant changes, rather speaking in HR, when it comes to this work, from gender equity to race equity, but there is still the issue of anti-black racism that needs more attention. The ongoing systemic marginality of black community has not changed as much as all the other sectors, unfortunately. So there's a lot of work needs to be done around unpacking anti-black racism and putting in place strategy and meaningful action to make some change in that area.

Speaker 2: 7:09

Before Elton dives in, I need to hone in on something that you said, evelyn. You said people need to give people what they need for companies or organizations, and to give people what they need to thrive. Expand on that statement a little bit for me please.

Speaker 3: 7:26

So you have to look at the employees and see what their needs are. Not everyone is the same. They have different needs in the organization. Some people might require certain tools, some people might require different scheduling. Some people might require something, might be accommodations in terms of religion and so forth. It's issues around 2S, energy, btq.

Speaker 3: 7:49

Be mindful of the intersectionality of all our identities, how they come together and they collide sometimes and they intersect. So we look at people and respond to their needs based on their multiple identities being female, being racialized and all their various aspects and then respond to the needs of those people, be it as a servant, as a staffer, so employee or also as a client, not just giving a cookie cutter answer. This is how we do it. It has to be individualized and looking at what are the needs of the individuals in order for them to thrive.

Speaker 3: 8:29

So there's a particular image we use in our workshop that shows a tall person having the same box just look across the fence. A taller person have the same one box along with this shorter person who can't see the fence. But we are giving everyone a box, but the shorter person might require three boxes in order to see across the fence, whereas the individual was tall and might not need any box at all. So we look at people and give them what they need in order to see across the fence, as opposed to everyone gets the same box, regardless of your height. But is that the way we reach equality? No, we use it, equity, as a framework, so that person might require three boxes to stand upon see across the fence and the other individual might not need that any box at all. So that's equity as a tool to drive equality.

Speaker 1: 9:18

You mentioned earlier about equity and equality. Can you tell me whether or not there's some type of prioritization going on between the marginalized people, those that have a larger box than those that are marginalized? Who gets the attention first?

Speaker 3: 9:39

It's really having to take a reflection and reflection to look back on audience in the organization and you can see where people are. If you take an audit of your organization and say it looks like all our frontline staff are females and all the leaders are males, or who are who's in C-suite and who is not, then you can then take a look and say how are we going to rectify this? If you think it's wrong, and then you put in place different steps and programs to help mitigate that. Taking a snapshot and try to equalize it. That could look like mentorship program for recruitment of people who have skill sets and then provide mentorship support. Also some kind of reevaluating your criteria and say maybe this criteria is artificially inflated. Once upon a time the most police officer 99% were male and after their assessment was done they realized we don't really need strong, bulky men to be police officers. We need people who can think so.

Speaker 3: 10:37

There has been some reimagining of the criteria for a police officer and now we see a much more equitable numbers of people who are sitting. It is that our police officers, for example. I just give you one example where sometimes there are artificial criteria that blocks some people from going into a system. When you evaluate it, you just realize they don't need all of this. This is really inflated. So you imagine what you really need to reimagine how you even create the criteria. Is that criteria one that maybe unconsciously negatively impacts some group over others? So you have to do that kind of unbiased assessment and that's why we have people who are the organizations that help unpack that.

Speaker 2: 11:22

I hear you say, then, that perhaps the criteria or the barometer or the yardstick that was used to get people into these positions. One is the question where they started in the first place. And yes, now we're seeing women that are driving public transportation, but in the old days you didn't see that they had to be big, tall, strong men. But it's not necessarily about brawn. We can say it's about brain as well and emotional intelligence. Yes, I hear where you were. You were going with that. So, evelyn, you've had positions with the government. Talk to us about some of those experiences and what was it like for you?

Speaker 3: 12:01

I was very lucky when I was my first engagement was all of my engagement with the government was around funding equity seeking organizations. So it allowed me still to use my community activism lens or framework to what I was in a government office helping women's organizations and racialized communities to receive support to help the drive change. So financial support. So I was really happy to be in those roles because it was also changing within government. It's funny now, quite frankly, driving change within government, which was a unique position to have. I was no wonder that the Malibu government decided to close our offices because I think we might do too many things. Issues around equal pay or equal work we had those legislation helping organizations like the National Action Committee in the status women Canada's foremost women's organization. Issues around childcare we funded all of these groups and helped women's organizations to develop research and best practice on these issues to really shift. And yeah, it was in government. Pushing that work was amazing. So I really enjoyed my time in government because I was doing what I love to do, except I was being paid for it by the federal government which was driving change.

Speaker 3: 13:28

Status of women Canada funding women's organizations for providing the capacity to push agenda forward Issues around violence against women, the issues of even putting forward the old notion of the diversity of women's experiences, because when I started status of women, the old idea of black women and racialized women's issues were not really embedded in the system.

Speaker 3: 13:48

But as I got on, as I came in and more people like me joined the federal government in those departments, we were able to really bring forward the issues around black women's concerns, south Asian women, chinese women. It's really the broad and little kinds of intersectionality in the federal government. But during my time. So it was an exciting time. So when it became less exciting, I left and came back to the community, which was people thought are you crazy? What about your pension? I'm like no, I can't live, I can't work Like that. I enjoy working for the drive change and when they close my office and suggest maybe I should work in immigration or some other enforcement agency, I chose to leave and go back to community and I was like, in my opinion, it was a good decision. I ended up leading my own company now, which is in power.

Speaker 1: 14:44

I think it's very important that when you have to work, you should be doing something that you enjoy, something that you love, because if you don't, you wind up not spending much time really mentally in that area. So what leadership positions have you held in government, business and in the nonprofit sector, and if you could give us an example of how your leadership turned things around for a specific person or organization.

Speaker 3: 15:21

So in government I was with the Secretary of State and the Women's Program under that banner and was the original director for the Southwest Office, which is Hamilton, goes to Niagara, kitchener, wattalu, windsor, yeah, and Susan Marie. So in that work I think for my biggest contribution was working in driving intersectionality in the analysis, bringing racialized women's voices to the table. It's all notion of women being white and everybody else is in multicultural, because I work for the fed so we have both multicultural women's program and I remember when, say, a black woman's organizing with Plymouth status of women in Canada funding there was discussion about well, we should send that down to the multicultural department.

Speaker 3: 16:20

We are the women. Why can't they receive funding from the fed or the women's program? And are the issues embedded into the women's movement Driving that piece? Working with colleagues across in the department, across the region and across the country, actually, with more black women and racialized women entering government, we were able to really push those issues forward and giving opportunities for racialized women to access funding through status of women in Canada. It was written. It wasn't written. It can't accept it. It was a thinking among staff that once it's a funding request from a racialized group it should go to multicultural Canada as opposed to being part of women's program. Fighting to embed what we call moving black women's voices from the margin and bring it into the center would be one of my accomplishments. Along with it was a team approach. It would be one person, but it was something that we especially the black women around the racialized women around the department worked very actively to convince our colleagues to use a more inclusive approach to addressing women's diversity of women's experiences.

Speaker 2: 17:38

Evelyn, sorry for interrupting you Now. On Speak Up International, we seek to inspire, to educate and to inform through the stories of community builders like yourself, because there's no question in my mind that you have been working conscientiously, consciously, on building our community and building women up. So help our listeners to understand the goals of the Hamilton Center for Civic Inclusion. Talk us a little bit about that.

Speaker 3: 18:15

It was a part of my past experience as working with this organization, which is still existing, with new director ED working there now, but on my term it was really an organization to help to center the voices of racialized and marginalized communities in the decision making in the city of, broadly speaking, the city of Hamilton, not the corporate itself but the old city to address issues of racism and education and economically speaking and also at the political level, so really bringing to the fore the issues that are facing racialized communities and make sure that we were responding to them, be it at the Department of Education, be it at El Sector and so forth.

Speaker 3: 18:59

So we did a lot of the patient work, public awareness around racism and how we need, what kind of strategies we need to embed to address these issues. We brought together at the time the table was a cross-sectoral group of people from all sectors, from Stelco, defasco, the Board of Education, mcmaster University, hamilton Health Sciences, as well as community organizations to work together to identify issues and develop strategies and action steps to mitigate the challenges that were being faced by racialized community members in Hamilton. There was a burning of the Hinduxomal Temple right after 9-11, and that was the inspiration for the establishment of that body and was to really address issues around racism and to look beyond that.

Speaker 3: 19:53

That was an opportunity for us to say let's take a look at our city and see what needs to be done and what we can do to use this negative incident to drive change in all sectors.

Speaker 3: 20:07

So we use that as a catalyst to mobilize communities to address issues of inequities in the city. And more recently, I'm the leader for one of the African community groups called African as in Black, the Afro-Canadian Caribbean Association, which I'm presently working as a president of the organization, and so I'm very actively involved in creating a safe space for Black community members to connect, to engage and to, let me just say, sometimes to avoid the white gaze, as Maya Angelo reminds us. So that's some exciting work that I'm doing. Right now we have and I think that's one of the biggest programs the programs that we're working on in Hamilton is to really make sure we address issues of anti-Black racism at a strategic level and at a practical level. In so doing we are having C programs for our seniors and for youth and to be a strong voice to address some of the inequities that our community members are facing and you talk about Hamilton.

Speaker 1: 21:20

there's a light in your eyes. I take it that you really are in love with Hamilton. I want to know about you and the Wentworth School Board Safe School Panel. There was 25 community consultations. Can you elaborate on that?

Speaker 3: 21:41

Okay, I want to give a big shout out to my sister and colleague, kika Ojo, who really had a huge contract to work with the city of Hamilton to address the issue of bullying and she brought me in as the lead for the community consultation pieces and I love working with people like that who want to work together and really build sets of sisterhoods. Shout out to Kika the bad. So yeah, I worked with them to talk about the issues, identify the issues that were faced by racialized grouping, especially to hone in on those issues. So we had consultations across the city on the various target communities, including Black, south Asian, lgbtq, us, lgbtqia and so forth.

Speaker 3: 22:35

That was an exciting time because it was a big incident of someone died in Hamilton School Ward because of bullying. There was a huge uproar, of course, and out of that was let's take a bigger look at this issue, and one of the pieces of work I needed to be done was the consultations. My company, empowered Strategy Group, was asked to lead the community consultation. So we traveled across the big city of Hamilton, different regions, areas, and held consultations with communities, from families, parents as well as educators, along with students themselves, and prepared a report that went to the Board of Education. That was later embedded in the fuller report around that was then given to the province and, with some recommendation, asked how to address the growing issue of bullying in schools.

Speaker 2: 23:28

Ms Evelyn Myrie, the person that I've known for many years and the person who continues to build community, tell her listeners what joy giving activity do you have built into embedded in your life? What kinds of things do you do for Evelyn to experience in joy?

Speaker 3: 23:54

I see that smile.

Speaker 2: 23:55

I see that smile. Tell us.

Speaker 3: 23:58

I love my community, I love my city and I love my community in terms of my African communities. So a lot of work that I do. I know you can ask me about myself and hear about other things, but just before I segue into that answer, I just also want to let you know that in Hamilton we have one of the longest black achievement awards that we have called the John C Holland Awards. That 20 years, 20 odd years ago, in my living room was established and it still is one of my on my tombstone. It would be remiss if that's not on there. I feel most passionate about establishing the co-establishing the John C Holland Awards here in Hamilton, which celebrates black excellence and black achievement and so forth. So that's what I actually enjoy A lot of work I've done. I really enjoy my work. So I find joy in even doing that and seeing the faces of young people when they, in their names, call it out and they get a scholarship, or people of work in the community for years and they call them across the podium and they're so excited. It brings me a lot of joy.

Speaker 3: 25:10

But on a deeper personal level, I used to run marathons. I've done eight marathons in my life so far. My knees are not as well as they used to be, so I used to run every day. In the middle of the snow there's this see this little dot running 20 miles in the morning. So I enjoy that. I love to travel as well, and I've been to many countries in the continent of Africa as well as Europe, and most recently, I have gone into the practice of yoga. Even with my fused back here, I still go to yoga in the mornings and I love to exercise. I go to the gym, I go to yoga. I'm also deeply looking at the purpose of us being on this space this time. And yeah, so that's that.

Speaker 3: 26:03

And having my morning coffee puts really small things. We think it's this big thing, but life, it is a journey, it's not a destination. So you can get out as time. A spot in my day, or many spots, to take a deep breath, to have a coffee, to talk to a friend, to read a poem and so forth Are things that we I do and encourage others to do, not to wait for this big day when I find happiness. This happiness and joy comes within and you. It has to be cultivated daily.

Speaker 3: 26:36

So my biggest thing now this morning I was going to the gym. I'm like, oh, I don't feel like going. And I remind myself you are not your mind, do not let that mind tell you stuff you don't need to be doing. So I have to tell my mind to get away from me so I can do what I have to do. That's my new mantra. So I tell people you're not your mind, don't say your mind said I can feel like doing it. Okay, what is that all about? So that's my little journey, every little tidbits. I tell myself every day, as I know I'm supposed to do something. I feel like doing it. I'm like, okay, I feel like it is so what you got to get it done. You're not your mind. That's my new thing.

Speaker 3: 27:14

So I find you and I went to the gym this morning and I felt so good I'm like, okay, I did it. I told myself, get out and do it, Don't talk about I don't feel like good at this dark outside.

Speaker 1: 27:26

You want to cut them up. I heard Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of use that same philosophy. He gets up in the morning and he doesn't want to go, so as he's going to the gym, everything is in black and white. But then when he goes to the gym and he works out and then he's feeling really good when he walks out of the door, everything is in color. So I get it in terms of the importance of exercise. Weed, elizabeth 2nd, golden and Diamond Jubilee medals and the order of Hamilton. Can you explain the significance of those awards and honors that you've received?

Speaker 3: 28:15

Yeah, for my community work. My member of parliament nominated me for those awards, so I was very, it was very, it was nice to receive the awards. Yeah, so that's my community work. I'm happy to have received those. But I also received the 100 Black Women Awards and, coming from my community and coming from your community, those are more powerful, very powerful messaging for me, and so I do appreciate the fact that my member of parliament and people in Hamilton value the work and have acknowledged me through the Queen Elizabeth Diamond as well as the Golden Jubilee Merit Award. I do have a little sometimes reason this because of the notion of coloniality and so forth, but I do appreciate the acknowledgement.

Speaker 2: 29:16

Miss Sabine, who, or what would you say, is responsible for the person you are today? That's a big one, who?

Speaker 3: 29:25

or what, okay, I think, the country in which I was born. I was born in a little island of Jamaica and I always felt that I can do whatever I want, especially my little teacher and Martha Bray Miss, miss, it's a call of Miss Embley and I'm nervous about it, but there's a sound and she went to one room class doing my ABC and walking on the street and saying my ABC and the woman community would say it's a bright little girl, without didn't want you to hear her speaking to each other, not to you, and building my sense of esteem and pride. Those moments which I didn't realize until later. And I came to Canada at the age of 15. So my sense of self and self-worth was already instaught in me, so I didn't have to question my blackness and whether or not it's beautiful and it's perfect.

Speaker 3: 30:24

My mother, who has my great inspiration as well, a domestic worker who arrived on these shores and saved all our money, just like many others, and sent for six children, and all in one. She never buy the designer clothes, she never went to parties, she just saved her measly income and sent for children, six of us at once, as opposed to one and then the other. We were able to build our relationship as children Our sisters we had six girls in the house, so we had a really great way to connect with each other and nurture our relationships. We were separated in Jamaica, different family members having us Grandma had me, my aunt had my other sister, and so forth. So coming together to live together with my mom was amazing and my mom's mantra was just do it, get it done. She didn't have the educational background, never had the opportunity, but she had that spirit and tenacity that pushed me and when the high school teacher said, oh, I think she should go to the technical classes which is streaming, my mom said not this one.

Speaker 3: 31:30

Nova, meded, buddy it's many people women I've met over the years Daphna Clark in Windsor, ontario, who has been a mentor. The Cara Libby who gave me my first job. People like Jean Augustineau, as a young black woman just starting in the field of justice and met her for Cooper Benjamin. I'd say these women when I look up, wow, they're standing on there and speaking through to power, my family, as well as many people along the way, and I've named a few of them, but many more.

Speaker 1: 32:05

Evelyn, I just have to thank you first of all for spending this amount of time with us today. You've done wonderful things at the Empower Strategy Group. You have held on to many positions in government and the nonprofit sector and you have provided positive results. You have contributed in promoting diversity and inclusion in organizations. You came up with the John C Holland Awards. You orchestrated 25 community councils at the Wetmer School, and this goes on and on in terms of all of the things that you've done for our community, even being the president of the Canadian Caribbean Association.

Speaker 1: 33:02

Very important, key roles in our community. I just hope that you will continue in the good work or the good fight as it's called, and we're looking forward to find out what you are doing, because I'm assuming that all of the listings that we've done today, you'll come back with new, fresh ones and probably 10 times as many. But thank you very much and we look forward to seeing you soon. Thank, you.

Speaker 2: 33:35

Appreciate your calling. Thank you, thank you, my sister. Thank you, my sister. Thank you, my sister. You're shining as a star, as usual.

Speaker 3: 33:45

I'm shining as a star because I'm standing on the shoulders of people who are stars. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 33:56

Thank you for listening to Speak Up Exclamation Point International. If you wish to contact Evelyn Mairee, please leave your name, your email address and the reason why you wish to contact Ms Mairee to info at speakuppodcastca. Are you interested in the opportunity to be interviewed and have your calls promoted by Speak Up Exclamation Point International? We invite you to connect to us by sending a message that includes your name, company or organization name, the valuable service you offer to your community and your email address to info at speakuppodcastca. Worried about your confidence as an interviewee? Don't fret.

Speaker 1: 34:47

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